Thursday, January 12, 2006

I missed this piece (link in title) when Saul Singer wrote it in the JPost and when it appeared on NRO, but it perfectly captures the preposterous mindset of the Europeans regarding the Iranian nuclear program and how the world has virtually come to the point of implicitly relying on Israel to keep Iran a nuclear-free zone. I wrote on that subject yesterday, and have previously noted my agreement with Singer's colleague Caroline Glick's view.

Singer rips the West for its fecklessness and the immoral reliance on Israel to be the West's hit man:

What a perfect arrangement: The only country that every country has a right to condemn can be relied upon to do the world's dirty work. This is the underlying mindset as the West contemplates a nuclear Iran.

When push comes to shove, the Israeli air force will take care of the problem, so the world can go into spasms of righteous indignation while enjoying the fireworks.

* * * The question remains, why is little Israel being left to fight the world's war? The answer is not just that life's unfair. The real answer is that the enlightened post-modern European refusal to lift a finger — let alone a gun — to defend itself is consigning us all to a dark age of terrorism and war.

Indeed, it's Europe's unwillingness to uphold or have anyone else uphold the "collective security" purpose of the UN Charter that has left the West in a Hobbesian -choice situation, as Singer notes:

The nations that wrap themselves most tightly in international law are actually those responsible for turning that law, and its aspirations for the world, into a dead letter. As in the case of Iraq, by refusing to join the U.S. in effective non-military collective action against Iran, Europe is making military action or an Iranian victory inevitable.

It is in this context that I found it difficult to watch European ambassadors placing a wreath on the spot where a suicide bomber killed five Israelis, including 38-year-old Eliya Rozen, outside a mall in Netanya . . .

What wreath will these ambassadors lay if Israel gets hit by a nuclear weapon? Or if Israelis are killed in a war to destroy Iran's nuclear program? Or if 9/11s continue to multiply, including in Europe, because al Qaeda enjoys the tailwind that a nuclear Iran would bring?

Perhaps it is pointless to appeal to European sympathies for Israel when these same nations won't even defend themselves. Most bizarre, however, is that Europe, by refusing to impose draconian sanctions on Iran, is guaranteeing either a huge victory for the terror network or military action by the US or Israel. In other words, under the cloak of international law, Europe is bringing either the aggression of its enemies or unilateralist defensive actions of exactly the sort it claims to most want to prevent.

Those diplomats, no doubt, had the best of intentions. But with all due respect, spare us the wreaths. Join us and defend yourselves. We are not your hired hitmen; don't depend on us to save you. Take your beloved international law seriously and throw the book at Iran.